Journey
by blumoone
Summary: Six months ago Tara's Maker left her without a second thought and now the changes in the world following the War are threatening to engulf Louisiana like raging flood waters. Will Pam's return be the life saver Tara needs to pull through or will the weight of her past and present be the heavy stone pulling her down beneath the surface into the abysmal depths below.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Season 6 as far as our favorite pairing goes was an utter and absolute joke. I will not pretend that I was at all pleased with where Pam and Tara left off. But as a fan and writer I feel it is my duty to gather the pieces of this ship, salvage it, and rebuild it into a Titanic sized ocean-liner. For all those who are reading this, I greatly appreciate you. This picks up right where season 6 left off after the six month time jump.**

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Blood tears welled up in the ebony skinned vampire's eyes as Lettie Mae's words sunk in; words she had longed to hear since she was a child. Alone, neglected, starving. She could remember with vivid clarity the night when she had climbed atop the kitchen counter, crawling with roaches feeding on mouse droppings to reach the cabinets which were bare save for a canister of stale cornmeal. Lettie Mae had been passed out on the couch in a liquor induced stupor as her five year old daughter feasted on the flour, Tara's first meal in nearly a week.

Shaking her head to bring herself back to the present –the barbecue at Bellefleur's, the old shed – Tara sniffed softly trying to keep her tears at bay as her mother blubbed like a baby. Obsidian eyes widened as they took in the sight of shoulders shedding a sky blue blazer and trembling fingers undoing a satin scarf, revealing a long ebony throat. The no had formed on Tara's tongue before the request had even left Lettie Mae's lips. So unfathomable was it that the Holier-Than-Thou sanctified religious minister's wife would even consider allowing fangs anywhere near her neck that Tara could have laughed at the utter ridiculousness of it. If she wasn't trying not to cry, that is.

"Come 'ere. Let me feed you."

A spell of silence passed between the two, identical sets of eyes watching, gauging before tried to swallow around the growing lump in her throat. "I can't."

_"Please," _Lettie Mae begged piteously, "This _whole_ thing, all the trouble in this world, it's a _blessing _Tara. It's a chance for us to heal," she shuffled backward perching on the wooden crate on which she'd discarded her blazer and extended her slender arms towards the vampire, tears rolling down her face, "Come 'ere. Let me _feed _you! Let me take care of you! Let me _nourish _my baby girl."

Oh how Tara wanted to believe those words. It was as if God had finally answered the prayers she had been sending up to Him since she was old enough to press her palms together. Slowly her feet moved almost on their own accord to her mother, closing the distance between them. Had she still been human her heart would have been pounding. She blinked a few times to try the clear away the blood tears that itched to fall. She sank before Lettie Mae, eying her outstretched arms warily. Could this be real? Dare she hope that her mama was finally _finally _trying to make things right between them? Pam had all but abandoned her when she had left six months ago on a futile journey in search of her beloved Eric, cruelly snatching away the only solidarity she had known all her life.

Her fangs dropped with a sharp click and Lettie Mae flinched but didn't back down. Tara gave her a moment more to change her mind which she let pass. Leaning forward, the ebony skinned vampire inhaled slowly taking in the scent of fresh, pulsing blood. So overcome with emotions that were a confusing tempest composed of disbelief, hope, love, hatred, anger, happiness and wonder was Tara that she didn't pick up on the subtle sluggishness in Lettie Mae's pulse. She struck as her tears fell.

Tara drew her mother's blood, pulling in quick succession until her mouth was full. And that's when she tasted it. That underlying bitterness that seemed composed of malice itself. Lettie Mae held traces of Hep V coursing through her veins. And thanks to the mandatory blood test, the preacher's wife had known it. She had known her blood would cause the True Death of her own daughter.

Shoving the woman away from her so hard and fast the crate beneath her splintered, Tara spat the tainted blood out of her mouth, the crimson viscous fluid dribbling down her lips as she rounded on her mother.

"You fucking bitch!" she screeched, "You tried to kill me! You hate me that fucking much?"

Lettie Mae's crocodile tears had dried up faster than the desert and she sneered at her daughter, "I should've aborted you when I had the chance. A mistake you was! Drove your daddy away from me, got yourself knocked up by my man when I'd finally found happiness, brought me nothing but shame all your life and now you done got yourself turned into a blood sucking whore on top of it all!"

Tara's blood soaked fangs flashed as a feral growl was torn from her throat. Every fiber in her being begged to be used in the killing of the human woman before her, retribution for all the wrong that had been committed against her since she'd been born. But no. She wasn't going to do that and she knew it. She didn't want to give Lettie Mae the satisfaction of murdering her and ultimately proving the point that her own child was nothing but a monster.

Vamp speeding towards the preacher's wife, Tara gripped her firmly by the shoulders before she'd even had a chance to move. Capturing the obsidian gaze that was painfully identical to her own, she allowed Lettie Mae's mind to bend to her will, her thoughts flowing into her own just the way Pam had taught her. Her mother's mind was now a bowl of putty, utterly vulnerable to any form of molding and manipulation Tara saw fit to inflict.

"Lettie Mae Daniels," the vampire drawled, her voice a seducing monotone that now wielded a swaying command her victim was helpless but to obey, "You have been childless all your life. You never had a daughter by the name of Tara Thornton. If anyone asks or speaks about anyone by that name in her presence your response will be 'I haven't seen her'. You do not know who I am and have never seen me before." She paused then and took a shuddering unnecessary breath, "Goodbye Mama."

The glaze of glamour slowly seeped from Lettie Mae's eyes and Tara took a step back as confusion rapidly took its place.

"What am I doing in here?" Lettie Mae groused, beady eyes roving suspiciously around the shed until they landed on Tara, "And who are you?"

"Um, I was just trying to get away from the party. It's crazy out there," Tara lied but even to her own ears it sounded unconvincing.

"Mmhmm," the preacher's wife murmured, eyes narrowed into snake like slits, "Well alright then, I best be's on my way."

Tara watched as the woman who had given her her human life walked away and her shoulders sagged. She waited for the tears to come but they never did. Instead, an odd weight settled in her chest. For as long as she could remember she had felt like a motherless child; someone who had absolutely no one but herself. During her childhood, Adele Stackhouse had been something of a mother figure for her but the kind hearted woman wasn't _her_ kin. She didn't belong solely to her. She had her own grandchildren to mind. Sookie had been something of the sister she had never had but the waitress had been knee deep in her own supernatural shit that her relationship with her best friend took back seat. Then there had been Naomi but that had lasted but so long.

That was all before she had been turned and then, she had in a manner of speaking, acquired Pam who had in a short period of time become solid ground in the rolling ocean that had been her life. And then Eric had come back and his mere presence had begun to chip away at that rock, exposing a rotting center that proved weak against his barrage. It was that weakness that had sent her Maker, her second mother, into full blown superman mode after Eric to God only knew where.

And here it was. Once again, she was now utterly and completely alone. But before she had even a moment to allow the tumult of emotions to settle in, the sounds of screams broke her reverie and the ebony skinned vampire's feet blurred into motion, bursting out of the confines of the tool shed and into the developing melee that had a few moments ago been a peaceful barbecue.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks so much for the favorites and the follows! You guys are awesome! Here is the next installment. If you have time, just leave and little something to let me know what you thought!**

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He was really gone. She could not feel him. For over one hundred years a steady, rhythmic beat had pulsed between them. It had been a constant reminder, an assurance of their connection; a connection that was supposed to last for eternity. But after Eric had released her, that flame had been extinguished, the beat silenced, and the ties that had bound them together was severed. Pam could no longer sense her Maker and it still fucking hurt.

For six long months she had searched for him, scouring all of Europe and the Americas for any sign of the thousand year old Viking and had been unsuccessful. What hurt the most was she didn't know whether or not he was dead or just didn't want to be found. She couldn't tell if he'd gone into hibernation. She couldn't tell if he was in pain. She couldn't tell if she was getting closer and closer to finding him or moving further and further away from her quarry. Fuck him for releasing her. She still couldn't understand why he had done it.

What remained constant however no matter how far away she got from the shit hole Bon Temps she had left behind, she could still feel Tara. The pulse between her and her own progeny still beat strong. And that was her only comfort. It was what had willed her to go on once the decision was made to give up the search for Eric. She had lost her Maker but she still had her progeny. She had something to return to. She had something to fight for and it was so strange, really it was, because fifty years ago – hell, one year ago, someone could have told her that she would find a way to live without Eric and she would have looked at them as if they had six heads on their shoulders. But no, the bond that connected her and Tara together gave her a strength she had no idea she could possess.

But with the strength came wariness. She knew Tara. Her return would not be met with open arms and tears of relief. It was going to be a long, harrowing journey back into the heart of her progeny, a journey on which she was ready and willing to embark. She had been blinded by her love for Eric for so long that she didn't think it was possible for anyone to come in the way of it. But Tara Mae Thornton had defied the odds. Pam thought back to the very beginning when she had first laid eyes on the human that was to be her progeny. Lafayette's cousin had charged after him down the stairs into Fangtasia's basement with guns blazing – literally. There had been no fear in her penetrating obsidian glare that she never once averted from Pam's glacial gaze. The blonde's interest had been immediately piqued.

So traumatic was the memory of being victim of that witch's rotting curse, she had somehow managed to repress it – or conveniently forget the details that had ensued once they had all stood in a circle in that candlelit graveyard waiting for the bitch Marnie to remember how she had erased Eric's memory. But she did recall following Tara to Merlotte's. She had been in the company of a beautiful Oriental girl and she wasn't sure if it was jealousy, rage at her having her most prized possession literally melting away, or a combination of the two that had caused her to attack the two as they stood canoodling by a ghastly baby blue pick-up truck. She had gone straight for the Asian girl which made no sense considering the fact the poor girl was innocent in the crimes committed against her face. But still, she'd attacked her first. And Tara wasn't having any parts of that. The blonde remembered with an odd fondness the blow to the head Tara had delivered with a pipe or something conjured from out of nowhere and how her attentions had been diverted from the quivering pale skinned girl at her feet to Tara. Even in the face of death Tara had been unflinchingly fearless.

It was that fearlessness that had ultimately made up the blonde's mind when Sookie and Lafayette had hysterically begged her to turn Tara when the human had taken a bullet to the head for the waitress. The deal concerning the bits about Eric had been an added plus but the fact remained that she had _wanted_ her life blood flooding Tara's veins. This human would make the perfect vampire. Her turning had been challenging – a difficult birth as a human mother may have put it – but it had worked. And Tara's first few moments as a newly raised baby vampire had been amusing to say the least. Sookie and Lafayette knew not the force they were attempting to reckon with. Wild, feral, and strong as hell, baby vampires could not see reason in those first few moments. But Pam had had a bar to run and the newly turned Tara could not be allowed near Fangtasia lest the establishment be reduced to rubble in five seconds flat so she'd ordered her progeny to stay in the house, not to make a meal out of the fairy and the medium, and went to work.

She hadn't been expecting Sookie's farm girl ass to show up at Fangtasia the next night and tearfully exclaim that she had lost Tara. The human was so incompetent Pam couldn't see what the hell Eric or even His Royal Dickhead King Bill saw in her. She had begged her to summon Tara but Pam could feel the bond between herself and her new progeny and had known the baby vampire was all right- scared, angry, and a little hungry, but all right. Let Sookie worry. It would serve her right.

Pam would never forget the pulses of pain and panic that had flooded the bond later that night. She had been sitting at her desk in Fangtasia's office, calculating the night's profit when she had felt Tara's agony screaming through the bond like a banshee. The girl was hurting badly and she was doing it to herself. _Stupid._ She was out of her seat and flying through the streets of Bon Temps before she'd made the conscience decision to do so. The pull led her down Main Street to a tanning salon. Curl Up and Fry. How cute. The glass door had been smashed and unlocked from the outside and the screams coming from within were like a lighthouse in the middle of a foggy ocean. She turned off the machine that was cooking her Child from the outside in and lifted the lid to find Tara's exposed flesh horrifically burned and disfigured. But she was unafraid. Pissed the fuck off but not scared.

Her progeny was no coward. And that was the moment, Pam realized, that she had fallen in love. It wasn't the head over heels type thing that had happened with Eric. It was something borne from admiration, attraction, and an overwhelming desire to protect Tara from the girl's greatest opponent – herself.

But she had all but abandoned her Child for Eric. She had never liked to be wrong. Not even when she'd been human. But she knew she had been wrong for what she had done. Tara had been little more than a newborn and Willa – her vampire sister – would still be in the suckling phase were her vampire age to be equated to that of a human's. So she'd basically left an infant in the care of a baby. Eric had walked the night for a millennium. He was a big boy. He could take care of himself. And it had taken Pam six months to realize this.

It was time to return home.


End file.
